Are Your Facebook Friends Feds?

New papers uncovered via the Freedom of Information Act show that federal agents have been making friends and keeping tabs on people in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest.

The papers showed that they use those fake accounts to check up on alibis and talk about sweet FBI parties.

Apart from unveiling how much time the feds are probably spending on social networks, is this really surprising? Everyone has seen the stories about police checking up on someone via their social networking, so why wouldn’t more sophisticated agencies use it for more sophisticated crimes.

The first comment on Slashdot hit it right on the nose.

“If you need a leaked document to know that spies are spying, you fail at life. Obviously information-gathering agencies will deploy personnel wherever there are large amounts of potentially useful information to be gathered,” said someone going by the handle of calibre-not-output.